The Recorder Exam

Five Minutes Ago

October 2008 •English

A young man pretends to sleep while he watches his lover go through her morning routine.

A Family Upside Down

April 1978 •English

An elderly married couple find that as their physical and mental health deteriorates, they find themselves dependent more and more upon their grown children.

Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter

May 1979 •English

A woman, who had left home 20 years previously under acrimonious circumstances, finds out that she is terminally ill. She returns home and tries to rebuild her relationship with her embittered mother before she dies.

The Albatross

January 1998 •English

A ship sets sail on an epic voyage through malignant natural and supernatural elements from which one man alone survives. An adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner illustrated by19th Century wood engravings which are animated by scratching directly into the surface of color filmstock. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with its message of ecological redemption has a curiously contemporary resonance, but it is at the level of the mythic that the poem has lasting relevance; for this epic tale of extraordinary events simply mirrors the struggle that each human being faces on their own in his or her life. -VDB

Hollywood Lucifer

January 2014 •English

Midnight Son

February 2007 •English

Mild-mannered professor Edward leaves his wife, Rita, one night to meet a stranger from an Internet chat room. It is only during his journey that we begin to discover the real reason for the disintegration of Edward and Rita's marriage.

Eat My Shit

February 2015 •Spanish

Eat My Shit tells the tale of a woman with the unfortunate defect of having a butthole for a mouth.

M4: My Many Married Men

December 2014 •English

A young french woman moves from Paris to New York City looking for love. What she finds are four different men who have one thing in common: they're married.

Traffic Jam

May 2013 •Dutch

An unmarried thirty something businessman drives to work, being stuck in a traffic jam. He gets calls from his overprotective mom, as well as from his most helpful assistant. But today he feels a little more lucky, since the mysterious woman he has been following pulls up just next to him. He tries frantically to get in contact with her, but basic communication is not as evident as it seems to be ....

Heritage Minutes: Sitting Bull

May 1995 •English

Native American Chief Sitting Bull seeks refuge in Canada.

Égalité

January 2022 •German

14-year-old Leila is only supposed to have her tonsils operated on, a routine procedure. But when she wakes up from the anesthesia, she is suddenly blind. While the doctors are completely at a loss to explain how this could have happened, Leila's father Attila is beside himself. In his opinion, the doctors botched the operation. From day to day, he gets more and more involved in this thought and gets into a downward spiral that seems to have no end. Meanwhile, the family members drift further and further away from each other and become increasingly estranged. One day Attila finally makes a decision that will have consequences...

Is It Time?

Invalid date •English

A man addicted to visiting his memories wrestles with a promise he made his father when he was first diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

The Last Rung on the Ladder

January 2019 •English

A man, upon learning of the suicide of his sister, flashes back to a summer when they were kids and he saved her from falling from a dilapidated ladder.

The Bravest Way

June 1918 •English

Tamura, a Japanese man working as a gardener in America, saves his money to marry his girlfriend, Japanese-American Nume Rogers. His friend Watana works for a Japanese businessman named Motoyoshi so that he can get enough money to bring his wife Sat-Su and their children to America. However, on the day that Sat-Su is to arrive, something happens that changes the lives of everyone concerned. A lost film.

Somebody Is Waiting

December 1996 •English

An alcoholic father must take control of his wayward children when their mother is killed.

Every Breaking Wave

February 2015 •English

Every Breaking Wave, based on the U2 song of the same name, is set on the streets of early 1980s Northern Ireland. It is built around themes of emotional abandon and the uncertainty of romantic relationships following two teenagers, one Catholic and the other Protestant, who fall in love amidst the ongoing violence.

Occupy Me

June 2015 •English

Two men, David (a Jewish-American) and Sam (an Arab-American) meet for an afternoon sexual encounter and find that there is more between them than just a visceral connection. But when a flirtatious word-spar about sexual positions turns unwittingly into a debate over something else entirely, both men take sides against the other and replace that could-be beautiful connection with anger, resentment and accusation. OCCUPY ME is about the insidious way outside issues can seep into our interpersonal relationships and invade and cloud our perceptions until love is replaced by anger, truth is pushed out by fear, and potential is destroyed by the past.

High Tide

July 1987 •English

A backup singer gets stranded in a small coastal town after losing her job in a band. She winds up in a caravan park only to encounter, by accident, the teenage daughter she deserted following her husband's death.

Ladybird Ladybird

February 1994 •English

Maggie has had four children, by four different fathers, removed by social services because of a previous violent relationship. When she meets Jorge, a gentle Latin American refugee, she gradually sees her chance for happiness, but her history still haunts her.